The fact of the matter is that if your competition is both well optimised AND has a stronger number of Good Quality Inbound Links from quality, relevant websites using strong anchor text then you will be out ranked. Link popularity is now THE dominant factor in who ranks the highest within Google. Other major search engines such as Yahoo and MSN also give a strong emphasis to back links for their ranking criteria.
In a fiercely competitive environment, link popularity will make or break your search engine optimisation campaign. Links more often than not are heavily content related. To earn them a site must offer high quality content and be considered worthy as a destination to visitors.

It's an irrevocable fact of web life that search engines live for relevance - relevance is why sites are elevated to high search return positions. Off Page Search Engine Optimisation in the form of link building if applied professionally to a professionally developed site will work to highlight the relevance of the site. Development of high quality copy and content is an ongoing related process in conjunction with developing inbound links.
The name of the game is to win friends who in turn influence your search engine ranking. Google themselves say - In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. Sites with genuine authority will only link with sites they feel to have genuine authority (after all their reputation is at stake to a degree by association to you) and this will boil down to content and relevance making it easy for the search engines to identify you.

A high search engine ranking leads to more friends and so the virtuous circle continues. Let SEO-MAMA make sure that this vital aspect of your SEO pushes you to the front of the field. Remember - authority isn't established through what's on your web pages alone. It is earned from a combination of various factors and in particular inbound links and how many websites with Authority you are affiliated with.

There are numerous ways in which we can integrate link building into our suite of SEO tools. Largely an off page component of an SEO campaign it merges into online PR and wider web profiling activities. Link building is as essential as it is varied.

Here's a short list of possible link opportunities that we explore as the link building aspect of a SEO campaign:

Profile Sites - New style "Web 2.0" sites often allow for the creation of profiles with links, from Frappr and Newsvine to MySpace and Yahoo! 360 to Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon are potential goldmines for links.

Blogsphere - Identify the leading movers and bloggers in your market place. Link to them from your blog but let them know you've done so. If your site has quality it's probable that many will reciprocate.

University sites - .edu or .ac sites carry great weight. Maybe you could write an article or contribute in some other way that could deserve a link.

Government sites - again .gov sites carry great weight.

Your own blog - Interesting, specific information is often of interest to potential visitors. A blog can be a very useful starting point from which to generate interest in your site.

Professional contacts - friends' sites, suppliers or industry bodies. It's always good to network your URL.

Directories - Yahoo, yell.com, DMOZ etc there are numerous paid for and free directory submission opportunities. This is the easiest and fastest method of link building. There are numerous good quality (human-edited) directories whose permanent directory listings show up as valid back links within Google, Yahoo and/or MSN. We manually submit to quality directories that have relevant sub-categories.
Link baiting - embed copy or media with links contained within the site content. We apply smart, 'sticky' Internet marketing to entertain and attract attention.

High quality exclusive content - Content is king. High quality, exclusive content reigns supreme. Offering high quality content, useful tools, or other helpful services can be a powerful way to attract non-reciprocal links. Imagine the authority of a site that establishes itself as an industry resource - tefl.com or alibaba.com for example

Article submission, syndication and article exchange - Articles like this one are an extremely useful way of link building and generating inbound links. Articles are likely to be relevant, non reciprocal (it is widely believed these days that non-reciprocal links are weighted more heavily than reciprocal links) and you may have the opportunity to include links to more than just one page in the article. This might include a reference to an internal page within the piece and maybe the home page URL as part of the author's biog.
Widgets - screen savers and wallpapers, feed displays, viral applications, niche applications that site owners can include on their own sites are a great way to build links.

Contests - links that could win a prize

Offline marketing - use offline marketing campaigns to generate links

Link requests - Identify sites/pages that you want to be linked from. If you don't ask (politely) you don't get.

Again relevance is key and it's always important to ask yourself, "Is mine a site that my visitors would be interested in?" It's a pointless exercise for everybody otherwise. If you can honestly answer that your site visitors would be genuinely interested in a site then the link is good.

In addition to link building concepts listed above there are also a number of technical SEO adjustments that can be applied to help increase the potency of the SEO and link building campaign. Site structure, site size, cohesion of the content across the site, the internal linking structure and Keyword Density all play an role to some degree or other.

On page interlinked content (the internal anchor text, its source and destination) can prove a powerful factor in generating search engine authority and subsequent high returns. When the opportunity presents itself links to related products, related articles and related searches should be included. Anchor Text is optimised and keywords deployed throughout documents that are applied to an internal linking strategy based on contextual architecture.

Each web page should be approached as a standalone entity with a unique title tag that reflects the content on that particular page. Including keywords in your domain/sub domain or file/folder is always advisable and strong Search Engine Optimisation will ensure that your page/folder URL contains your most important keyword. Ideally name your web page files starting with the targeted keyword - keyword.htm - It doesn't matter how awkward web page files look or sound, as they are not publicly viewable. It's only you and the search engine spiders get have access to them.

Link building is an ongoing process and to ensure a solid and secure influence on the search engines a number of approaches to gaining them should be adopted simultaneously.